AnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy

Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.

ATSB - Heavy (Data Rate)

Since the Heavy test is shorter but in some ways more intense than The Destroyer, most of the drives with PCIe x4 interfaces are able to deliver better average data rates here than the WD Blue SN500. However, despite not being able to match the high-end drives for peak performance, the SN500 is more competitive when the test is run on a full drive.

ATSB - Heavy (Average Latency)ATSB - Heavy (99th Percentile Latency)

The average and 99th percentile latency scores for the WD Blue SN500 on the Heavy test are good but are still beat by the Samsung 970 EVO Plus and on the empty-drive test runs, by the ADATA SX8200. Without labels on these charts, it would be impossible to point out the SN500 as a DRAMless drive, but the Toshiba drives and the QLC drive are clear outliers.

ATSB - Heavy (Average Read Latency)ATSB - Heavy (Average Write Latency)

The average read and write latencies for the SN500 are competitive with other NVMe drives of similar capacity, and neither score is significantly degraded on the full-drive test runs.

ATSB - Heavy (99th Percentile Read Latency)ATSB - Heavy (99th Percentile Write Latency)

The 99th percentile read and write latencies are also quite good. For reads in particular, the WB Blue SN500 shows less impact from running the test on a full drive than all of its competitors.

ATSB - Heavy (Power)

The WD Blue SN500 is not the only NVMe drive that can complete the Heavy test while using no more power than a decent SATA drive. However, it is more affordable than the most efficient high-end drives and doesn't suffer from the horrible worst-case scenario that ruined the Toshiba RC100's full-drive scores.

AnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer AnandTech Storage Bench - Light
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  • gglaw - Saturday, April 20, 2019 - link

    There really is no market segment for this drive unless the WD name is enough to sway a lot of customers. Pretty much every week there's an EX920 or Adata 8200 500GB drive for between $70-$80 and they are superior to this drive in every way. You could nitpick on brand reliability, etc, but both those drives have an incredible track record in the last couple years.

    For a primary OS/Apps drive, I would get the faster HP/Adata for a few bucks more, and for a games/storage drive I would get the cheapest SATA I could find (usually an Adata 1TB for $90). Can't think of any scenario I would get a budget NVME over one of these options. This WD drive would have to drop to $60 to be a real contender.
  • DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link

    There's absolutely a market.

    The SN500 will drop in price drastically. It also will stand out when prices increase, as they always do. Just as QLC dropped in price, just as 3D NAND dropped in price.

    Why you people have to drop negative comments about a product that was just released, I'll never understand. It always drops in price. First world problems, my son.

    By the way, spending "a few bucks more" for an overkill drive makes no sense. The SN500 is more than capable as an OS drive.

    Realistically, WD releasing the SN500 provides more competition and that will lower prices. I really don't understand what your issue is.
  • Cisco Guy 318 - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link

    Abismal endurance! What happened to petabyte endurance? MLC is bad enough but the newer chips have poor endurance!
  • FunBunny2 - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link

    to paraphrase an ancient consultants' adage: "speed, endurance, capacity; choose two".
  • DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link

    Except that 64-layer 3D TLC NAND has exceeded planar MLC in every metric?
  • FunBunny2 - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link

    for now, I suppose. so long as TLC is fabricated on 40-50nm, perhaps so. capitalist greed will, in due time, impel vendors to drop down to contemporary nodes in search of capacity. what then? or, is it, now?

    Mr Tallis: true of speed and endurance?
  • DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link

    Except that 64-layer 3D NAND (and up) from Samsung and Micron/ Intel is at 20nm and Toshiba/ Western Digital is at 19nm. You understand planar TLC basically ceased at 14-15nm?

    Back in 2016, with the advent of smart SLC caching techniques in addition to intelligent controller firmware, SSDs utilizing 3D NAND effectively outpaced 2D "planar" MLC. In fact, the 660p (utilizing 3D QLC) can perform on par (in certain metrics) with SSDs utilizing MLC because of Intel's intelligent pSLC caching strategies.

    In the end, it doesn't matter. You'll never chew through the endurance of a modern SSD when subjecting it to consumer workloads, period. The controller can effectively mitigate write amplification in most circumstances.
  • DyneCorp - Sunday, April 21, 2019 - link

    Abysmal endurance? Far from it. The SN500 carries an endurance rating far above the Samsung 850 EVO and is in SU800 territory; its endurance rating is actually quite high, comparatively.

    You do understand that just about any SSD utilizing 3D NAND has endurance ratings far beyond what 2D planar MLC SSDs had?

    Most importantly, remember this: endurance doesn't matter for consumer drives. SSDs last far beyond their warranted endurance life.It's been tested.

    Why is this? Because modern controllers can effectively mitigate write amplification by several factors. The majority of consumer workloads will NEVER burn through rated endurance, period. Honestly, including a TBW rating is unnecessary.
  • PeachNCream - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link

    You can expend the write endurance of a modern SSD. It isn't a difficult prospect and workloads don't have to be heavy ones for that to happen.
  • DyneCorp - Monday, April 22, 2019 - link

    Under consumer workloads (OS and gaming) no, you cannot. It has been tested. Also, SSDs regularly outlast their given TBW rating by multiple times. If you check the S.M.A.R.T. attributes and software of older planar SSDs you'll see that even heavily utilized SSDs are healthy.

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